A Josh Ritter Review in 3 Parts

Last night Fran and I went to see Josh Ritter at the Horseshoe tavern

1 - Josh Ritter

Josh Ritter is one of my favourite live acts. If you ever get the chance to see him, I recommend you jump at it. He's funny, genuine and heartfelt and he really, really gives the impression he loves what he does. He smiles.....alot, and has a way of making everybody in the room feel a whole lot better. Just a great guy playing great music.

2 - The Horseshoe Tavern

The Horseshoe Tavern is one of Toronto's most famous venues. It's a dingy tavern with a bar up front and a bigger room at the back. All kinds of amazing people have played there from Stompin Tom (won't mean much to the non-canadians, sort of Canadian Robert Burns meets Hank Williams) to the Rolling Stones. It's also, as it happens one of Toronto's worst venues.
There's a couple of reasons for that. One is the stage set up, tucked into the front right hand corner, with a small standing space in front and then a large seated area behind. That's right, standing up front, seating behind!!? There are a lot of pillars and also alot of standing running up the left hand side which doesn't make it easy to see the stage on the front right. The other reason is that the Horseshoe has a plan to make money, and that plan is to have the bands go on as late as possible. Josh, playing on a freezing cold Thursday night in february went on stage after 11pm. Now this isn't the Sex Pistols and this isn't an audience of piss tank students (well not entirely but more of that later). This is a folk singer from Idaho with fans my age and up, who mostly work Monday-Friday jobs. I really don't want to be leaving a show at 12:45am anymore. I know it's not very Rock N Roll to say that but I don't.

3 - The Audience

So I don't like the venue and the 3rd reason is the audience it creates. As I've already said the bands go on very late, which does mean people are restless (the place was pretty full by 9.30 last night) and have spent 2 or 3 hours drinking. A drunk crowd can often really enhance a show, especially if your drunk too (it sure helped watching The Darkness), but again, it doesn't really help the solo singer/songwriter who is telling stories and singing songs that are all about the lyrics. Drunken idiots are shouting asshole comments (Josh likes to sing away from the microphone to create a more intimate atmosphere and somebody shouts, "You need to sing into the microphone") and talking loudly. We had a threesome behind us who seemed to have no reason to be there other than to piss me off. They didn't know much about Josh, and spent most of the time talking about nothing. A lady beside us tried a few times to get them to shut up, but they pretty much berated her and kept on with it. It was pretty obvious the more you provoked them the worse it would be. I think those type of people, you should be allowed to stab at shows. Not a fatal wound, just one that gives them the option of either continuing with their conversations but bleeding to death where they stand or leaving to get medical attention. I'm not joking about this, I really think it should be legal to stab these wankers.